From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-11-10T03:28:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Current Quizmaster Retiring

On Nov 9, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Phrogz wrote:

> I'd like to echo the thanks of others. Having authored and summarized
> just a few quizzes myself, I know how much time it takes all too well.
> I'm frankly amazed at your dedication that you kept it going this
> long.

Thanks to all of you for the kind words.

> * RubyQuiz.com (or RubyQuiz2.com, or whatever) has an interface where
> anyone can submit ideas for new quizzes.

This is a side concern, but I do vote we split any new Ruby Quiz  
efforts off on a new domain.

I've tried building my own version two site in the past and one of  
the issues with something like that is incorporating all of the old  
material.  It's a pain and thus I vote we just don't do it.  It's far  
easier to just turn the old site into the archive for the old content  
and have it link to current efforts.

> * Ideally, the application monitors the gateway or ruby-talk archive
> for submissions with an appropriate topic and auto includes them in
> the listing of solutions and/or discussion. (Again, maybe admins have
> the ability to hand-pick posts to include.)

I've tried to do this a couple of times now.  It's pretty dang  
tough.  Most of my problems came from wanting to extract the code  
from the messages though, so if you avoid that it might not be so bad.

> The potential upsides I see of this are:
> * Seeing upcoming quizzes may give good ideas for interesting
> variations. I actually anticipate occasional interesting influxes that
> may queue up 10-20 quizzes at a time.

The quiz has worked like this, though maybe not 20 at a time.  We had  
some terrific runs where I didn't build a quiz for quite some time.

> I dunno how much of the above JEG II has already written for personal
> administration, but I bet it would be a nice starting step.

All of my old scripts are pretty tied to my current setup, so they  
won't be of much use.  I've been wanting to replace them for a long  
time now, so you're definitely going to want to build new tools.

Of course, if you want to know about all the mistakes I made with my  
setup, I have a lot to say about that.  ;)

James Edward Gray II